The house was their own, and the earth gave them their bread, their
wine, their vegetables, their oil, hemp, and flax for their linen,
and herbs for their soup; of the olive-oil they had more than enough
for use, and the surplus was sold once a year in the nearest town,
San Beda, and served to meet the fiscal demands. They had rarely any
ready money, but no peasant in Italy ever expects, unless by some
luck at lotto, to have money in his pocket.

He worked hard; at some seasons extremely hard; he hired labour
sometimes, but not often, for to pay for the hiring takes the profit
off the land. But he had been used to such work from childhood, and
it was never irksome to him; even though he rose in the dark, and
rarely went home to supper till the stars were shining. He had no
near neighbours except the poor folks in Ruscino. All surrounding him
was grass and moor and wood, called communal property, but in reality
belonging legally to no one; vast, still, fragrant leagues of
uninhabited country stretching away to the blue hills, home of the
fox and the hare and the boar, of the hawk and the woodpecker and the
bittern.

Through those wilds he loved to wander alone; the sweet stillness of
a countryside which was uncontaminated by the residence of men
stilling the vague unrest of his youth, and the mountains towering in
the light lending to the scene the charm of the unknown.

In days of storm or rain he read with Don Silverio or sang in the
church; on fine holy-days he roamed far afield in the lonely
heatherlands and woodlands which were watered by the Edera. He
carried a gun, for defence if need be, for there were boars and